What many once held dear are now meaningless anachronisms

HAVE you noticed how, year after year, the Twelfth of July diminishes in importance and news value? I'm not saying it doesn't matter any more of course it does.

But even the Garvaghy Road is becoming something of a damp squib in terms of confrontation, and the vast majority of the 60,000 or so Orangemen who marched this year were involved in no unpleasantness at all. Most people just went about their business.

And that means most Orangemen too, by the way. A few short years ago it was a quarter of a million Orangemen who marched on the "Twalfth". Now, it reminds me of the last chorus of the Eric Bogle song "And the band plays Waltzing Matilda, And the old men answer to the call; But year after year their numbers get fewer Some day no one will march there at all."

Any trouble that does erupt tends to be played up by the media, and that's natural enough. But the truth is that trouble is becoming more and more localised concentrated, by and large, in less than a square mile of Belfast and a little bit of Portadown.

I'm not seeking to minimise things. There is hatred and distrust in many parts of Northern Ireland still. The violence we do see is very bitter, and it will take a generation more for that to die away. Ask any Orangeman if he is thinking of giving up his membership and he'll treat you with scorn. But, privately, many of them are quietly opting for an inactive membership. It's not even a conscious thing, just a case, finally, of time beginning to move on.

It's the side of Northern Ireland we don't see, and aren't shown. There aren't, and there won't be, mass resignations from the Orange Order. There'll just be drift into a different way of doing things. Different sorts of relationships are beginning to develop in offices and factories throughout Northern Ireland, a different way of life is beginning to take hold. Some of the empty seats at the Orange meetings used to be occupied by men who are now out playing golf with other members whose religion they're no longer sure of, and whose handicaps are starting to matter more.

Some, of course, insist on sticking to the old routine. Banging the drum, wearing the sash, demanding the right to offend their neighbours. Their neighbours in turn, in some cases, still want to make an issue of principle out of refusing to allow them to pass. The game seems capable of never ending in some neighbourhoods. But in others, inexorably, times are changing.

We should think about that a bit ourselves. The development of peace in Northern Ireland is now set on a course that may still have many bumps and twists but is, in my view, irrevocable. The value of that, to the economy and well-being of this whole island, is going to be inestimable in the next couple of decades.

We were willing to pay a price to bring that about. Back in 1993, when the Downing Street Declaration was published, Ireland (in the person of our Taoiseach Albert Reynolds) undertook to "create a new era of trust as a token of his willingness to make a political contribution to the building up of that necessary trust, the Taoiseach will examine with his colleagues any elements in the democratic life and organisation of the Irish State that can be represented as not being fully consistent with a modern democratic and pluralist society, and undertakes to examine any possible ways of removing such obstacles".

Here's a suggestion in that direction. Watching some of the anachronistic images we all associate with the Orange marches the hats and sashes and the Lambeg drum I was struck by something that had occurred to me during the World Cup. We have an awful anachronism of our own, in the form of our national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann. It's time we got rid of it. Its words mean nothing any more, and they are gratuitously offensive to many of the people who live on the island. It reflects nothing of the "modern democratic and pluralist society" on which our peace is founded.

In fact, most of us don't even know the words. When we have to, we sing a half-remembered, half-Irish, half-English version of the chorus of the original song.

We don't even sing the song none of us know the song. There are actually three verses as well as the chorus, and none of the verses have been sung in public for more than 50 years. I have never met anyone who even knows the air of the song, as opposed to the chorus. To be honest, it wasn't until I researched the anthem that I even knew there was more to it than the words we know.

The chorus has actually been our national anthem for more than three-quarters of a century. The verses, with their references to "men of the Pale" and the "Saxon foe" waiting out yonder, have more or less vanished. All we're left with is a jumble of meaningless and jingoistic sentiment.

For instance, who of us really means it when we bellow out that we are soldiers, whose lives are pledged to Ireland? Not me I don't want to be a soldier, and my life, for what it's worth, is pledged to my family. What's more, I don't feel the need to rid my ancient sire land of despots or slaves not the foreign kind anyway. And as for manning the "bearna baol" in the midst of cannon's roar and rifle's peal, I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in wondering what the hell they're talking about.

Seriously, without any disrespect to the pride and patriotism the song might have stirred up once, isn't it long past time we replaced it with something that more accurately represents modern Ireland? Isn't it time that we found, or developed, a song that our sports people can sing with pride and even that they can understand? And isn't it time that we developed something so that everyone who lives on this island might feel okay about joining in when it is sung or played?

That might sound like treachery to people who belong to the "let no man write my epitaph" school of history making. But don't forget that our national anthem was originally "God Save Ireland" (a fairly bloody song itself, full of scaffolds, battle-fields and gallows trees). The Soldier's Song (the original name of Amhrán na bhFiann) languished in obscurity for 10 years after it was written, and the only reason it was adopted as our national anthem was because it had been sung in the GPO during 1916, and as a sort of signature tune by IRA prisoners after 1916.

In the interests of reflecting the modern, open country we have become; for the sake of giving a new generation a chance to find their own voice; and even because it has long outlived its usefulness, let's start searching for a new and relevant national anthem. The Soldiers' Song says nothing to us any more. It's time we retired it with honour.